Too Much Whip & Chop

[occam]

I don't think anybody's saying that chopping strictly for clearing land is cheesy.

I understand that. I wasn't defending land-clearing, per se.

I am saying: getting a bunch of crappy forests INSTEAD of resources is already a dismaying prospect. Even if chopping is cheesy, it only offsets over-forested starts.

 

[CLST]

There's more than just Farms.


Well, I wasn't saying this should definitely be done. It was just brainstorming. I was taking issue with the characterization of improvements not clearing forests/jungles as being something that would only make sense in a fantasy game.
Workshops, Windmills, Watermills and probably even Mines could be built without having to clear all the surrounding land of trees. That said, I don't think it would be appropriate in game.

Workshops and Watermills I can see, (watermills especially makes sense), but Mines and Windmills I don't see at all.

 

[Tiberias]

Thanks, interesting responses. I don't think my problem is with the tactics themselves; they might have a place in a well-balanced game; it's just that they're so good that they're nearly automatic. Virtually every other Civic is a decision; Police State, Bureaucracy, Pacifism, etc. But Slavery is so good it's a no-brainer, and some players don't give it up until relatively late in the game, if at all. There are admittedly a few other Civics that are no-brainers like Hereditary Rule, but they aren't the dramatic game-changers that Slavery is.

I've been tweaking the yields a bit trying to find a good balance. One thing I've tried is reducing the food output of grasslands and increasing that of Forests. After all, unless you're a cow, how is uncultivated grassland going to provide more food than a forest? Forests have big trees and lots of animals precisely because their location can support more life. However, I found that the +1 Food for Forests discouraged building improvements which reduced the usefulness of Workers, so I haven't quite figured out a solution there.

Adjusting the yields of the tile and/or of the chop is certainly worth considering; and lowering the yields for earlier tech levels has helped limit the chopping somewhat. I'm not sure what the solution is; it's possible to go the other way, and make forest so good that nobody ever cuts it down and instead goes with nothing but forest (Alpha Centauri all over again!) I like the option of clearing forest; I'm just hesitant about the prospect of rewarding the nearby city with a boatload of easy hammers for it.

I agree that whipping seems too popular (and powerful). I think that the best way to deal with this though is simply to increase the penalties for whipping and running Slavery at all. Increased slave revolts could be one option. Making bigger populations more valuable could be another. You could also make infantry and cavalry units use Food Production. That would place a somewhat higher premium on food and population.

Having military units use of food actually makes sense, but that would require a major rebalancing of the game. I do think that the production bonus makes sense for Slavery--the problem, though, is that the extra production comes up front, which makes it very tempting to use regularly, as it can dramatically speed up production. That's why I favor having it give a bonus over time--say, thirty hammers spread out over ten turns (the same ten turns of unhappiness) rather than all at once. Same effect, but not as much a temptation to use.

Yeah.. no one's ever been forced into military service.

OK, point taken! Although slave armies (Mameluks excepted) do not exactly have a stellar track record; virtually all the dominant armies of history have consisted primarily of freemen (even Greek triremes, which were manned by Greek citizens, not slaves, with all apologies to "Ben Hur".)

Now that I think about it, though, one of the problems is that, other than slavery, there is no other way to rush military production in the early game. I wonder if the Draft button comes too late in the game--realistically (I know, this is not a hyper-realistic game, but it's still an argument) early societies had what we consider to be mass conscription to fill the ranks of their forces. I think I'd prefer to see the Draft button much earlier, although as I think it's a bit powerful, it might need to have an additional penalty attached (like in Civ3, where drafted units were "green" and more vulnerable.) Maybe then have Nationalism reduce the penalty on drafted units; that would help make Nationalism less of a no-brainer Civic pick as well.

 

[phungus420]

Chopping really isn't that big of an issue, or overpowered. It's good, and strategic, plus you have to consider the loss of health bonuses and RR + Lumbermills down the road.

Whipping though is insanely overpowered and game changing. It really should be nerfed to half it's current hammer output, and at the very least you shouldn't be able to double dip the production modifiers for hammer overflow caused by the whip...

 

[Unconquered Sun]

As much as I like this game, I have to say that it's become tiresome reading through strategy after strategy that relies on the same two simplistic tactics: the whip and the chop.

What strategies are you referring to?

It's cheese, everybody knows it's cheese, but yet it's virtually the foundation of many, if not most, "advanced" game strategies. Shouldn't advanced game strategies go deeper than beelining to one tech, switching to one Civic, and chopping and whipping out buildings and units like mad?

But advanced strategies do go deeper already.

 

[UncleJJ]

Actually large parts of of ancient and medieval woodland was managed by coppicing see wiki and pollarding. This provided a continuous supply of new wood and charcoal and was harvested regularly at periods depending on the kind of trees. Forests were also used for hunting (usually deer) and herding of swine that were fattened on the acorns and beechmast in autumn. In medieval times the peasants (workers in civ4) would have spent as much time working in the forests as on the cultivated land or farms.

 

[JonathanStrange]

I suppose Tiberias and I are of that strange breed of gamers who don't like seeing Civ's epic story of the struggle between nations for survival and global hegemony reduced to cookie-cutter strategies gleefully employed with little regard to civilizational values, mores and historicity in an attempt to finish the game quicker, easier and with a minimum of enemy counterplay.

I suspect he and I feel a twinge of the uncivilized impulse to take up a yard of deadly, shining steel and - shouting our battlecry - charge our warhorses into the Slavers against all odds.

 

[CossackProblem]

If you live in the United States look around you. The land probably used to be nothing but dense forest. Deforestation is essentially what most civilizations did/do to their surrounding areas (Angkor Wat to ill-effects). Slavery was used up to the mid-1800s by the West (American Civil War; ending of serfdom in Russia) and lightly into the 1960s in some parts of the Middle East. It's not just a frequent function of the game, but a function of how civilizations actually came to be.

 

[UWHabs]

Yes, there was lots of deforestation, but there are still tons of forests around. I've often seen games where there are literally no forests at all, especially in the AI's lands.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Workshops and Watermills I can see, (watermills especially makes sense), but Mines and Windmills I don't see at all.

Heh... well, I guess that's somewhat dependent on how we think of the scale of a civ tile. Certainly, a windmill will not work terribly well if it's got trees all around it, but it doesn't require the kind of cleared land a farm would. As for mines, as long as it's not strip mining, it can be located in forested areas. My uncle owned a sapphire mines that was in the middle of the jungle... But to get back to the topic... I think though that we can all agree that for game purposes, it's not a good idea. I wasn't defending the idea, I was defending the realism.

Adjusting the yields of the tile and/or of the chop is certainly worth considering; and lowering the yields for earlier tech levels has helped limit the chopping somewhat. I'm not sure what the solution is; it's possible to go the other way, and make forest so good that nobody ever cuts it down and instead goes with nothing but forest (Alpha Centauri all over again!) I like the option of clearing forest; I'm just hesitant about the prospect of rewarding the nearby city with a boatload of easy hammers for it.

Yeah, that's a concern. It's one of the reasons I decided to scrap the +1 Food from Forests when I tried it in my own mod. It removed the incentive to develop many of the tiles.

OK, point taken! Although slave armies (Mameluks excepted) do not exactly have a stellar track record; virtually all the dominant armies of history have consisted primarily of freemen (even Greek triremes, which were manned by Greek citizens, not slaves, with all apologies to "Ben Hur".)

Well, I think slavery represents a general willingness to treat your entire population as expendable rather than a strict chattel slavery. I would compare it to simply conscripting warriors.

Now that I think about it, though, one of the problems is that, other than slavery, there is no other way to rush military production in the early game. I wonder if the Draft button comes too late in the game--realistically (I know, this is not a hyper-realistic game, but it's still an argument) early societies had what we consider to be mass conscription to fill the ranks of their forces. I think I'd prefer to see the Draft button much earlier, although as I think it's a bit powerful, it might need to have an additional penalty attached (like in Civ3, where drafted units were "green" and more vulnerable.) Maybe then have Nationalism reduce the penalty on drafted units; that would help make Nationalism less of a no-brainer Civic pick as well.

One of the things I have worked on as a way to balance an early Draft button is to have draft units only exist for a set period of time after which they're disbanded.

If you live in the United States look around you. The land probably used to be nothing but dense forest. Deforestation is essentially what most civilizations did/do to their surrounding areas (Angkor Wat to ill-effects). Slavery was used up to the mid-1800s by the West (American Civil War; ending of serfdom in Russia) and lightly into the 1960s in some parts of the Middle East. It's not just a frequent function of the game, but a function of how civilizations actually came to be.

Not true. A number of countries have, for hundreds of years, maintained forest management policies. And the United States actually has more forests now than it did a hundred years ago (I've heard stats that say it's even farther back than that). Any civilization that has ever stripped down their forest reserves in the way you see in the game has faced economic collapse.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Thanks, interesting responses. I don't think my problem is with the tactics themselves; they might have a place in a well-balanced game; it's just that they're so good that they're nearly automatic. Virtually every other Civic is a decision; Police State, Bureaucracy, Pacifism, etc. But Slavery is so good it's a no-brainer, and some players don't give it up until relatively late in the game, if at all. There are admittedly a few other Civics that are no-brainers like Hereditary Rule, but they aren't the dramatic game-changers that Slavery is.

Slavery has to be weighed quite heavily against caste, especially w/o great library. It's not a gimme civic, and caste can definitely the stronger option.

 

[Phoenician]

I don't understand this rant. Nobody is forcing you to chop and whip. I've played many games where I never used the whip and I often chop sparingly. But I don't see how chopping a forest to get a settler faster is lame.

 

[Earthling]

I do understand exactly where the OP is coming from and agree 100%. It's very true that optimal gameplay for civ4 absolutely requires both of these things; you can avoid them if you like but you're justing hurting your game.

First thing: Forest chopping in civ4 is ridiculous - players have to use it and take it for granted but there's no reason for it to be so. I don't think that chopping should have no benefit at all but right now it's easily 2-3 times as much as it should be. When flat out chopping is better than workers actually building any (non-resource) improvements there's a problem. In civ3 forest chopping only gave 10 production; those crazy elves like JonathanStrange certainly know that FfH is balanced perfectly fine without abusive forest chopping. If forest chopping was vastly reduced as a whole, and AI bonuses simply tweaked, I wouldn't see any negative effects on the game. The downside to this though is that weaker starts get weaker, and the player has less ability to exploit the AI's stupidity once again (the AI does not ever effectively chop from my experience).

Second part - the whip is a bit more of a complicated situation. As I was discussing in another thread recently, I feel that one of the major problems is that people simply misunderstand it/don't use it right. I'd love to look up the thread, but there was someone a while ago who ran extensive tests and found that whipping almost never provides a significant benefit in the long run, the only benefit is from what you're whipping being done sooner and this is something I always seem to have confirmed by gut feeling; the best conversions are only at really small (like <6 pop) cities and then you lose out on other things as time goes on.

So IMO whipping is only optimal (and realistic) early in the game- use late game mechanics like drafting, pay-rushing etc... otherwise. With this in mind I can't say the whip is too unbalanced, though there could be another option which adds a little to gameplay (I'd like to rework upgrades/earlier draft, the draft is what has been nerfed since earlier civ games). The main problem I have with whipping is not the principle of food>production or it being too powerful, but the fact that it is incredibly useful in raising early armies, which just doesn't make sense. But as something I'd like to mod/see changed this is an aspect of the military system; whipping itself is fine, certainly not overpowered on buildings, and then the problem of massive buildup of early troops isn't the whip's fault (the mechanic is fine as a last-resort type measure to save a city, or if you really need some unit like a ship/catapult).

Edit: Oh, and one idea I always thought would be cool, and negate a little bit of crazy-low pop city whipping/spice up the early game, for those who may be interested, is providing an extra (free, city center) hammer/commerce as the city grew - say at pops 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, etc... I know a lot of people mod things like hammers into trade routes, effectively doing the same thing, but this is even simpler, and would encourage a little more direct growth of cities (a little more balance to discourage city sprawl would be needed though).

 

[Cashew]

Part of the problem with chopping is the forest-heavy starts. When I get a start with 19/20 of the BFC as forest, I don't feel bad or cheesy using the chopping. I am making lemonade from my lemon trees. A nerf would be imbalanced.

Bit of a spurious argument since no one is arguing that the current map generator would need to stay as is should any change be made. If chopping was nerfed it'd be easy to reduce the number of trees you get in your start location.

Although I'm just playing devil's advocate here; I think the chopping system is fine the way it is.

 

[Kornaki]

A simple idea for an improvement that comes fairly early on, can be built without removing the forest, and could be modified to make forests less of a 'chop it down!' item. Just let camps be built in any forest, and give it +1 food or something.

 

[PieceOfMind]

The thing that bothers me about whipping is that often it's the standard way a city builds things. I've always figured that rush buying and slave rushing should be for instances where you really do need to rush something. The cost of rushing should be significant.

A greater penalty should be there for slave rushing, or possibly just apply another broad penalty for running the civic. The slave revolt happens very infrequently unless you're unlucky. How about making the civic High upkeep and +1 in 5 largest cities (like for Representation)?

If you made slavery less attractive, to help out those cities that are hammer poor, the workshop improvement should have the -1 removed from it. Early workshops are pretty much pointless because food can do the same job better in small cities because of the whip.

Another option: The penalty should either last twice as long or it should be doubled to 2 for the same period.

 

[Belisar]

the whip and the chop.

It's cheese, everybody knows it's cheese,

It's not cheese, it's food&wood.
Seriously, it's a game mechanic for transforming stuff into other stuff, not more, not less.
It even has (some) real-life counterparts, for example the ancient Romans and Greeks built huge wodden fleets which lead to huge deforrestation.

And then there's the issue of whipping military units ("into the armor, you!" *cracks whip*), but I'll save that for another rant.

Where is your rant about mining axemen out of the hills?
You will have to realize that this is a game and not a perfect simulation.

 

[troytheface]

"But I don't see how chopping a forest to get a settler faster is lame."

lebanon was deforested to build ships i think. I could see needing logs to build buildings like the pyramids (rollers) and wood for arrows and to make fires for forges for weapons.

but why would chopping a tree help make a settler?

 

[Flying Pig]

It wouldn't, but it's easier to give a flat production bonus than it is to give a different bonus for each thing built; it wouldn't help build modern ships, for example.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

The thing that bothers me about whipping is that often it's the standard way a city builds things. I've always figured that rush buying and slave rushing should be for instances where you really do need to rush something. The cost of rushing should be significant.

I think that really hits the nail on the head. Whipping citizens to death to hurry production should be (to quote the reformed Cookie Monster) a "sometimes treat"

A greater penalty should be there for slave rushing, or possibly just apply another broad penalty for running the civic. The slave revolt happens very infrequently unless you're unlucky. How about making the civic High upkeep and +1 in 5 largest cities (like for Representation)?

If you made slavery less attractive, to help out those cities that are hammer poor, the workshop improvement should have the -1 removed from it. Early workshops are pretty much pointless because food can do the same job better in small cities because of the whip.

Another option: The penalty should either last twice as long or it should be doubled to 2 for the same period.

Yeah, I'm inclined to have greater penalties for whipping and more incentives for not chopping. Although I have some ideas how to incentivize not whipping rather than just penalizing it.